In the poem, “The Accident,” Erica Funkhouser suggests that the woman is going through the process of betrayal from finding her husband and neighbor together. Funkhouser displays the actions of how the people in the poem act and react to each other. The simplest actions shown throughout the characters quickly give away the scene in the poem.
Funkhouser shows how the neighbor comes into a couple’s home from the hospital in the beginning of the poem. “She heard the hasty scraping of sole and heel against the clipped turf on the doormat.” The neighbor comes inside the house unexpected by a woman while she sits down at the kitchen table. As she sat down “her long legs straight in front of her like a ladder to a different world,” there was a reason why she was there with the couple. The “ladder to a different world,” is a place where the wife has never been since she did not know it had existed until her husband’s and neighbor’s interactions with each other.
The neighbor and the husband seem to have a connection the wife was realizing throughout the poem. “It was when the neighbor answered “yes” to a question to the woman’s husband had not yet asked.” The woman didn’t take long to realize what was going on between her husband and neighbor. “The neighbor knew he was going to cook for her. But how many times have they eaten together. Enough” As she was watching how her husband went cooking for their neighbor, the “still-flushed neighbor” was blushing showing embarrassment, nervousness, or guilt to the wife. While the husband was preparing food for the neighbor, the way he was cooking the food gave away the guilt the husband was feeling.
At the end of the poem, the husband’s smallest actions when cooking food for the neighbor has just gave away the message to the wife on what was going on. “She had never seen him do it like this before, two-handed. He always liked to show off by breaking eggs with one hand.” The husband was not behaving like himself, making the wife feel like the husband is up to something with their neighbor present in the room. “This evening his hands were trembling as he cracked the eggs,” while the wife was consuming all of the smallest details in the room and the connection between the neighbor and her husband.
In conclusion, Funkhouser displays “The Accident” as a poem with betrayal and realization to a character. As the wife went through the scene of having her husband and neighbor having such a strong connection by the neighbor knowing what the husband is going to ask. The neighbor has a better sense of what the husband is thinking, but as the wife sees this, she notices what the question was as the husband starts cooking. The husband has given away his feelings when he started cooking for the neighbor as he was trembling and not making the eggs like he always has. The husband’s and the neighbor’s ways of communicating has just told the wife what has been happening all along.
